


in widow's weeds

by magesamell



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Ghost!Chat Noir, Humor, Identity Reveal, Light Angst, Silly Songs with Ladybug Challenge, every ghost romance is kind of macabre okay comes with the territory, ghost!adrien, you know how it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 06:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18231101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magesamell/pseuds/magesamell
Summary: His first attempt to revive his cursed and slumbering wife killed his son. “Oh, bother,” said Gabriel Agreste, though he was not particularly bothered by this turn of events.





	in widow's weeds

**Author's Note:**

> Part of [LNC's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LNC/pseuds/LNC) Silly Songs With Ladybug Challenge! I got ["Ghost Story"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keegRRp2TN4) by Charming Disaster.

His first attempt to revive his cursed and slumbering wife killed his son. “Oh, bother,” said Gabriel Agreste, though he was not particularly bothered by this turn of events. Then he turned heel and went back to the drawing board.  
  
Nathalie, his long-suffering and equally evil assistant, merely sighed and called the number for corpse removal.

 

-o-

 

Across the city lived Marinette Dupain-Cheng, a perfectly ordinary girl, who — by the way — knew _nothing_ about magical superheroes, not at all, why would you even _say_ that. Marinette Dupain-Cheng was a perfectly ordinary girl with a perfectly ordinary if somewhat convenient skylight window in her bedroom just above her bunk bed. Marinette, being the responsible young woman that she was, usually kept this skylight locked when not in use. Which is why she was quite surprised when a tiny floating cat phased through the glass as if it only had the resistance of a thin and watery oatmeal.

“Ah!” Marinette yelled, brandishing a knitting needle at the intruder. “What are you,” she began, and upon getting a better look at the flying thing, changed her tone. “Chat Noir?” she asked, lowering the knitting needle.

“Not quite,” said the floating void. “I’m his kwami, Plagg.” To be sure, he carried a silver ring that markedly resembled Chat Noir’s pitch black miraculous.  
  
Marinette took this information quite in stride for a perfectly ordinary girl who knew nothing about magical jewels called miraculous. It would be suspicious on another girl, but Marinette had such an unassuming face.  
  
“Is something wrong? Is Chat Noir okay?” Marinette asked, and a spotted red and black creature crawled from its hiding place onto her shoulder. The two kwamis acknowledged each other in worried silence.  
  
“I don’t know to how to tell you this,” Plagg said.  
  
Marinette glanced between the two of them. “What do you mean?”  
  
“He doesn’t have the best bedside manner,” Tikki agreed, shaking her head.

  
Marinette’s left eye twitched. “Just say it,”she urged.

  
“Well. The kid. Hm.” The cat looked around nervously.  
  
Marinette gripped her needle in anxious indecision. “Oh my _god_ just say it!”  
  
“He’s kicked the bucket. Blown this popsicle stand. Crossed that rainbow bridge. Totally checked out. Hopped on the last train to St. Louis. Made like a shepherd and got the flock outta here. He’s uh, really given up the ghost. Though, erm, maybe that’s not the best way to say this—”  
  
“Oh my god,” said Marinette in a completely different voice. In a breathless moment, her heart was broken. She felt a deep, incomprehensible wave of grief threaten to draw her undertow. Oh, _damn_ _her_ for never appreciating her partner enough, for not taking more time to tell him how she felt. Oh, how cruel and consequential one evening could be! This very one had ruined the rest of her life, she was sure of it.

Her eternal angst was interrupted by a heavy, solid pressure landing on her shoulder. A pressure too weighted for one kwami, for two. Besides, it was on the other shoulder.

Still, Marinette glanced at Tikki and Plagg. Both of them were looking at the empty spot beyond her opposite shoulder.  
  
“What—“  
  
“Don’t be sad, Marinette,” said Chat Noir.  
  
“—the fuck?”

  
-o-

 

“So... _you_ can see him?” Marinette peered at the emptiness beside her. The emptiness shifted anxiously at her intense scrutiny.

“Of course,” chirped Tikki. “He’s a magical echo. A recorded state of the miraculous.” Tikki flew over, fluttering next to an obvious absence. “When you transform, you’ll be able to see him, too. Magic recognizes magic, after all!”

With quiet horror, Marinette watched her kwami nuzzle nothing at all.

Plagg flew in front of her face, still lugging the miraculous. “We need to you to bind the ring to him. Only Ladybug can do it.”

Marinette opened her mouth.

“She can’t bring him back to life, but she can link the recorded state with the miraculous so Chat Noir can last until the end of the fight. Now, he wasn’t transformed when he died. So when _you_ transform, you’ll see his secret identity.”

Marinette closed her mouth, worried her bottom lip between her teeth.

“It’s a fail safe,” Plagg explained. “It can be exploited for as long as you need him.”

“We need both Ladybug and Chat Noir to defeat Papillion,” said Tikki.

“That doesn’t seem...exactly fair,” said Marinette. She peered around the kwami to look at the emptiness, who, despite cuddling the other kwami, was awful quiet about all of this. “What about his immortal soul or whatever?”

“Life isn’t fair,” pronounced Plagg.

“Shouldn’t that mean we treat the dead with respect?” Marinette argued, gesticulating in irritated jerking motions. “Binding a ghost to a magic rings seems textbook supervillain. And selfish! I can’t just ask him to fight Papillion with me indefinitely.”

“Why not? That’s what you guys were doing before all of this.”

“But he had a life outside of the fight!”

“Did he?” mused Plagg, and Marinette gasped.

“You’re a very rude kwami,” she scolded, just as the nothingness said: “That’s enough Plagg.”

Marinette flinched, and swiveled her head towards his voice.

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“Of course you do,” she said, just as Tikki chimed in: “The record will fade in five hours if Ladybug doesn’t bind it.”

Marinette glared at her kwami. “Well, okay, so we have a deadline. That doesn’t change anything.” She took a breath. “If you — you don’t — I don’t expect —”

“Ladybug.”

“Yes, Chat?” Marinette whispered, and felt his hand at her cheek, felt his fingertips caress her hair, tucking a lock neatly behind her ear.

“If I have to suspend my soul in indefinite purgatory, I’d love to spend it with you, my lady.”

“That’s really sad,” Marinette told him, and then said, “Tikki, transform me.”

 

-o-

 

“Oh,” said Ladybug. Adrien Agreste was sitting on her bedspread. He waved and gave her a shy smile. “It’s you,” she said.

“The one and only!” he returned. His image glitched like static, and Ladybug realized he _was_ a projection. She followed the light with her eyes to the ring hung aloft in Plagg’s paws.

“You...you run around on all fours meowing.” She pressed a hand to her forehead

“I...I do.”

“You told me you cried watching anime last weekend,” she continued, looking up at the ceiling in bewilderment.

“Oh. Wow. I did tell you that, didn’t I?”

Ladybug shook her head. “Yesterday you bet me five euro that I couldn’t throw you from _Le Grande Paris_ to the Eiffel tower.” She stared at him, hoping that maybe he’d deny it.

“Yeah, um. I don’t think I can pay you back.”

“Oh god,” Ladybug sobbed, pinching her nose. “Adrien Agreste.”

“Can you guys hurry this up?” grouched Plagg. “I’ve been carrying this ring around for ages.”

“You have superhuman strength!” protested Adrien.

“No, he’s right,” said Ladybug, trying to speedrun emotional compartmentalization. “Let’s do it!” She took the miraculous from Plagg. “Give me your hand,” she told Adrien.

He did so, and for the first time, Ladybug noticed that his touch carried no heat, no flush of blood, no staccato heartbeat. Just a sterile pressure. He was truly lifeless. Her unrequited love and her loyal partner, dead and gone in a single stroke.

At this point, the boy in question burst out in furious giggles. Ladybug started, nearly dropping the miraculous. She fixed him with a withering glare, but, being a spectre, he failed to wither.

“ _Why_ are you laughing?” Ladybug demanded.

“It’s just…”

He nodded towards their joined hands: his flexed and waiting, hers hovering just so above his, poised to slide the ring onto his finger. “Not very appropriate is it? ‘Til death do us part?” His small smile stretched into a manic grin, an expression which, Ladybug realized in stunned horror, belonged to Chat Noir. “Since our love transcends this mortal coil.”

“Adrien Agreste,” Ladybug said seriously, “you have the worst timing of anyone I have ever met. You are it. The worst. You are the worst.”

“Oof!” Adrien pressed his other hand to his chest, wounded. “Way harsh, my lady. Don’t tease me too much,” he warned. “Or I’ll haunt you forever.”

Her smile was wry and accepting as she slipped the ring onto his finger. A white and searing light filled the room, through which only Chat Noir’s smile was visible: wide, flashing, and ghostly.

 

-o-

 

Like all shadows, he was least visible at midday. If you knew where to stand, however, and knew where to look, you could see him: the dark mirror of another yet living.

Ladybug’s shadow _moved_. Bounced around, twirling and flipping and evading, for her eyes only. It was all she could do to maintain her own composure while Chat Noir made faces at her beyond the circle of reporters surrounding the podium.

“Ladybug, where was Chat Noir this afternoon?” Her partner mimicked his posture, thrusting an imaginary microphone to her face.

“Chat Noir,” Ladybug began seriously, “has retired. He gave me his miraculous so that I can continue to defend the city.”

  
“But where’s the ring, Ladybug?” questioned a woman. Chat waved his hand in front of the reporter’s face, pointing exaggeratedly at the dark miraculous.

Ladybug bit down on her smirk. “Under the costume, obviously,” she explained. “Dunno why he never tried that. Makes it much harder to snatch.”

At that, Chat halted. He tilted his head thoughtfully. Ladybug, too, considered this possibility. Maybe all she needed to vanquish her arch nemesis was a helmet. Or some earmuffs.

This game changing realization was interrupted by another reporter. “But how did you collapse that building from forty feet away?”

Ladybug nodded her head with great solemnity. “I’m a much better superhero than he was.” Chat Noir put a scandalized hand to his open mouth. Ladybug leaned over the podium, whispering conspiratorially behind her hand to the audience. “He didn’t even figure out the invisible clone _jutsu_.”

He pinched her cheek, and she kicked him in the shin, hidden behind the podium.

“Don’t worry, Paris,” she said with smarting cheeks and shining confidence. “Ladybug isn’t going anywhere.”

 

-o-

 

“Boo!”

To her own great personal disappointment, Marinette jumped, nearly dropping her laundry basket. Her head whipped in the direction of the noise. “Cute,” she grumbled. “Really adorable of you.”

He only laughed.

“You’ve got to stop doing that,” she said, laying her basket on her settee. She pulled a t-shirt out and began to fold it. After she finished, she put the shirt down next to the basket. Just as her fingertips left the garment, another folded t-shirt dropped onto the first, forming a pile. Marinette looked up, and barked a laugh at a floating sock.

Eventually, her laughter died. For a complete nuisance, he was awful sweet.

“I miss seeing you,” Marinette whispered. She looked away, grabbing a pair of jeans.

“We could transform, if you like.”

“I mean, I miss seeing Adrien, I guess,” she amended, though that wasn’t quite the truth. She mostly missed whatever future they might have had, where the two of them could have a casual intimacy, with no secret identities and unrequited feelings in the way. Just Adrien and Marinette, just Chat Noir and Ladybug.

“In that case,” her partner remarked, “only _you_ could transform, and we could fulfill several of my daydreams.” He waved another sock at her. This one was colorful and covered in cartoon cats.

Maybe that future wasn’t as a far away as she thought.

“Gross,” Marinette growled through her rising flush. With a sigh, she let of the jeans, dropping to the floor. She turned, leaning her back against the settee.

Something in the air changed next to her. He was sitting next to her. She was getting better at detecting him, at knowing him from the nothingness.

“I’m...sorry,” he said. “I know this isn’t something you were prepared for.”

“You can’t possibly be apologizing to _me._ ”

“Well, you didn’t ask for a roommate. Much less. Whatever I am.”

Marinette scooted left, trying to find his shoulder. “S’not that bad. What’s changed, really? I asked _mamon_ to add camembert to the shopping list. Now she just thinks I have a mature palate.”

He made a noise of wordless amusement, or maybe disgust. She scooted even closer, finally bumping against him. After a moment of awkward maneuvering, he threw an arm around her, and she snuggled against him. Marinette closed her eyes against the empty space.

“I had an idea,” he told her. “I still don’t remember...anything, about how it happened. But we could go to my father’s house. We could investigate, if you like, but mostly I want to pick up my phone.”

“You think it’s still there?”

He shrugged, jostling her. “Can’t know until we look.”

“True,” Marinette conceded. She twisted, patted his arm for several moments before she found his hand. She squeezed it. “We’ll figure it out, _minou_ ,” Marinette promised, staring at the negative space between her fingers. “We always do.”

“I know,” he murmured. “You know I’d never leave your sight.”

 

-o-

 

“Adrien Agreste has transferred to another school,” announced Madame Bustier. “His father told Principal Damocles yesterday that he has decided to educate Adrien in the United States.” Madame Bustier looked sympathetically at her class. “Unfortunately, Adrien’s plane departed this morning, so we won’t be able to hold a goodbye party.”

A wave of distress rippled throughout the room. Alya Césaire looked at Marinette in astonishment, and, in a gesture intended to comfort, placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder.

Nino Lahiffe raised his hand. “Don’t worry, you guys. He stills has his old phone number.” He waved his own phone. “We can always video call him!”

Marinette narrowed her eyes. Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she texted her partner from under the table, shifting her screen out of Alya’s sight. Ladybug and Chat Noir hadn’t run a high-risk infiltration mission into the Agreste mansion just for Nino to facetime her empty bedroom.

“Thank you Nino,” said Madame Bustier. “Now, let’s begin with our morning meditation.”

 

-o-

 

“Oh, Marinette, I am so _sorry!_ ” lamented Rose Lavillant. Juleka Couffaine grunted in agreement.

Marinette yelped, turning away from her locker to find herself surrounded by her friends. All of them were staring at her with deep second-hand grief. Even Alix Kubdel, who had always participated in Marinette’s complex plans to seduce Adrien with a degree of skepticism, looked properly distressed.

“Oh,” Marinette said. “Adrien. Yeah! I am, uh.” Marinette’s gaze darted from girl to girl. The intensity of their stares made her feel like her grief was under interrogation.

When Marinette failed to continue, Mylène Haprèle took her hand. “It’s okay,” she soothed. “This doesn’t have to mean the end of the world. Lots of people have long distance relationships. It can be even more romantic, that way, you know!”

“That’s true,” said Alya.

Rose sighed. “Imagine knowing each other only through words. It’s like every exchange is a love letter!”

“Wait—” interrupted Alex.

“That settles it, then,” Mylène said.

“How can it be like a love letter if the whole love letter _thing_ is that it’s like, a real piece of paper?” demanded Alex.

Alya clapped her hands together. “We are _going_ to meet to figure this out. Marinette will woo Adrien through texts and social media and become his online gf or _die trying!_ ”

“Why do I have to die trying?” Marinette wondered.

“Can we come over Saturday?” asked Rose.

Marinette thought briefly of the cat that currently hung around her bedroom. “You guys are so wonderful,” she said. “But it’s really okay. I feel — fine, really.”

Rose gasped.

“I mean, sad,” corrected Marinette. “I feel very sad. But maybe this was a hint from the universe, you know?”

Alya shook her head. “No! You can’t just give up. I won’t live in a universe where Marinette Dupain-Cheng doesn’t know love.”

Marinette’s smile was unmercifully involuntary. She dipped her head to hide it, making sure to adjust her collar. Comestics couldn’t hide everything, after all.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Let’s do it. We _are_ a match made in heaven, after all.”

“Wahoo!” cheered Juleka. The other girls concurred.

Beside her, muffled, masculine laughter accompanied an invisible brush of lips at her temple.  
  


-o-

 

Ladybug paced anxiously around the rooftop. Chat Noir watched her lazily, tail twitching. Eventually, she stopped. Glanced at the forlorn sunset. And then turned to him.

“Do you think we’ll ever defeat Papillion?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. His words were so quiet, his words were a passing breeze. Ladybug was struck again by the realization that if anyone were watching, they’d see nothing more than a lonely woman on an empty rooftop. She closed her eyes against the hot tears threatening to spill over.

“It really is like we’re in purgatory,” she murmured. “Like Sisyphus. We keep fighting, running up the same hill day after day after day. We keep throwing bandages on the hurt and trauma and pain of the city but we can never _really_ heal. We can never move on.”

Her eyes flew open by the shock of his hand in hers. He had moved, and he was close, a tangible black void encircling her in his arms.

“My lady, cynicism is not a good look on you. You can’t heal in one day, or one victory. It’s the journey. It’s about...commitment,” Chat Noir said, something like joy plucking at his lips. “It’s about spending the effort to love and be loved in return. It’s about making use of what we have now, and appreciating the wonderful and terrible brevity of everything we know, everything we are.”

Ladybug shivered. “Of course _you’d_ say that, ghost boy.”

“ _Well_ ,” Chat said, and she saw the dying light of the sun bloom across his face. “What can I say. I think we have a good thing going, don’t you?” He grinned, daring her to deny it.

Ladybug smirked, rolled her eyes, and leaned in to kiss her partner.

**Author's Note:**

> say hi on [tumblr](https://marinxttes.tumblr.com)!


End file.
